Thursday, October 9, 2008

The best time to quit

Now that Pak Lah is quitting I remember an incident at my old school. As regular readers of my blog may have known I had my secondary education at a fully residential school. There were five hostels in the school named after positions held by palace officials. They were Rumah Temenggong, Rumah Laksamana, Rumah Bendahara, Rumah Sultan and Rumah Shahbandar. I list them not in protocol order but by order of their distances from our classes. Thus Rumah Temenggong was the nearest and Rumah Shahbandar the farthest.

Each house was headed by a House Captain. There were seven dormitories or rooms for each house, three in the ground floor and four in the top floor. Each room was headed by a Room Monitor. I could not remember whether the House Captain's post was by appointment or election. But I remember the Room Monitor's post was held by the most senior student in the room upon agreement with the the room mates.

I was staying in Temenggong House and I refer my House Captain as Mr. X here to preserve his dignity. Mr. X was popular in the earlier stages but when power went to his head he became arrogant and made some unpopular and questionable decisions. He would not listen to advice. So we decided to ask him to step down gracefully. This idea was brushed aside.

So we decided to put up posters criticing him. For these we sacrificed our drawing blocks and water colours. We put these posters in common places like the bathrooms, the corridors and the stairways. Of course Mr. X tore them in the first instance. Then we put up some more. Realising that his counter efforts were futile Mr. X resigned. Of course he fell with disgrace instead of dignity.